Black Women Are Less Attractive. Oh, Really?

A posting on Psychology Today's the Scientific Fundamentalist blog, titled "Why Are Black Women Rated Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women but Black Men Are Rated Better Looking Than Other Men?" was the talk of the Twittersphere today (usually just introduced with something like "Appalled!" or "Ridiculous!") ... until it disappeared, that is.

By computing the latent "physical attractiveness factor" of study subjects, using a tool called "Add Health" that he doesn't explain in the post, blogger Satoshi Kanazawa concluded:

[W]omen of all races are on average more physically attractive than the "average" Add Health respondent, except for black women. As the following graph shows, black women are statistically no different from the "average" Add Health respondent, and far less attractive than white, Asian, and Native American women.

Kanazawa (who is also the author of a book called Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters) then muses about the possible explanations for the "markedly lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women." He disregards differences in BMI and "the race difference in intelligence" (what?), and speculates, "The only thing I can think of that might potentially explain the lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women is testosterone. Africans on average have higher levels of testosterone than other races."

"The only thing I can think of"? Really? The blog's presentation of the allegedly scientific findings had a decidedly informal tone, especially given the highly contentious conclusions. It struck us as so outrageous that we almost thought it was a hoax of some sort, and we double-checked the URL to make sure it didn't include "The Onion."

Was this why it was suddenly pulled down from the site? We called the publication to find out, and a staffer confirmed that the posting had been deliberately removed (adding that it had received so much traffic that at one point the site went down) but gave no further information other than to refer us to the site's editors.